Word: comics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...CHARACTERS in Handle With Care are simply cardboard caricatures. What is most surprising about this film is that such a stereotyping detracts little from the comic narrative; Demme provides just enough twists in the plot to sustain suspense despite these superficial characterizations. Like the television show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Demme uses stereotypes self-consciously, parodying them at the same time that he favors them to enact his story. Demme only occasionally falters on the tight-wire between moderation and excess, when he over-ambitiously turns on the small-town ideology of the American Dream. Stereotyping works well...
Funny Girl. It's been a long, long time As I remember, the first half of this film a movie biography of vaudevillian Fanny Brice, shines and dazzles; very upbeat, very funny, the perfect showcase for the kitschy comic charms of its star, Barbara Streisand. But toward the middle the story starts to dim, at first imperceptibly, then markedly, until it has receded into a depressing and self-indulgent darkness. I am left with two images. One is of Barbara Streisand's overripe features mugging and straining as young Fanny auditions for her first show. Hilarious The other...
...film's most sustained triumph belongs to Clayburgh. Erica is the role this gifted actress has deserved for years, and now that she has it, she doesn't fool around. She swings gracefully from mood to mood-from hostile confrontations to hysterical shrink sessions to intimate and comic romantic interludes. She even dances a daffy Swan Lake in her T shirt and panties. Though An Unmarried Woman is otherwise populated by busted couples, Clayburgh and Mazursky make a sublime pair. - Frank Rich
...fairly simple plot--had Lipsky not chosen to interrupt the flow of the narrative with digressions and, in one case, an audience sing-along in the especially feeble Act I. At times Lipsky contrasts very well for comic effect the modern simplicity of Saul's words with the more formal diction of the other characters. For example, in the middle of a long tirade by Samuel, Saul interjects, "You know, you're a very gloomy person." But after a while, the wide-eyed stuff gets a bit grating...
PHILADELPHIA, Pa.--In preparation for today's EIWA wrestling championships at Penn, the Harvard wrestling team flew here yesterday loaded with thesis materials (seniors), comic books (underclassmen) and high hopes of qualifying one or more Crimson grapplers for the NCAA championships in two weeks...